Is Jim Caldwell the coach to get the Detroit Lions to their first Super Bowl, or their first playoff victory since January 1992?

Detroit fans will find out soon enough.

The Lions on Tuesday hired Caldwell, an assistant coach with the Baltimore Ravens the past two seasons and former head coach of the Indianapolis Colts, as the franchise's 23rd full-time head coach.

The hiring, first reported by ESPN's Adam Schefter and later confirmed by the team, is something of a consolation prize: The Lions reportedly were ready to hire San Diego Chargers offensive coordinator Ken Whisenhunt, but he instead opted to take the head coaching job with the Tennessee Titans on Monday.

Caldwell, 58, replaces Jim Schwartz, who was fired on Dec. 30 after five seasons, 51 regular-season losses and his failure to get the franchise back to the National Football League playoffs for the past two years.

Caldwell's track record as a coach is mixed.

He was head coach of the Colts from 2009-11 and has a 26-22 career record with that team. His team lost Super Bowl XLIV after the 2009 season, a year in which the Colts were 14-2.

Indianapolis went 10-6 the following season, but lost to the New York Jets in the Wild Card round.

He was fired by team owner Jim Irsay after the 2011 season, thanks to the Colts falling to a 2-14 mark. Caldwell was hired by Baltimore as an assistant shortly thereafter.

The Ravens won Super Bowl XLVII with Caldwell as quarterbacks coach during the 2012 season, but Baltimore's offense slumped in 2013 and the team finished 8-8 and out of the playoffs.

As head coach of Wake Forest University from 1993 to 2000, he was 26-63 with a single bowl appearance. The Demon Deacons were 12-52 in Atlantic Coast Conference play during Caldwell's tenure.

He also was a college assistant, in a coaching career than began in 1977, with Iowa, Southern Illinois, Northwestern, Colorado, Louisville and Penn State.

Caldwell was an NFL assistant with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, as quarterbacks coach, in 2001. The Colts hired him for that same job in 2001. He was quarterbacks coach and assistant head coach from 2002-08, and replaced Tony Dungy as head coach after that.

He is the Lion's sixth full-time coach since 2000 and 23rd full-time head coach overall since the team began NFL play in Portsmouth, Ohio, in 1930.

Caldwell is the Lions' first African-American head coach. The NFL requires its teams to interview minorities for head coaching vacancies, known as the Rooney Rule, and Detroit was fined $200,000 in 2003 for failing to follow the rule when it replaced Marty Mornhinweg with Steve Mariucci.

Along with Schwartz, the Lions fired offensive coordinator Scott Linehan and wide receivers coach Tim Lappano. The rest of the assistants were under contract into this month, and the fate of their jobs will be decided by the new coach.

The Ford family — William Clay Ford Sr. took ownership of the team in 1964, and son William Clay Ford Jr. as team vice chairman has day-to-day control of the team — were to make the final coach hiring decision, team president Tom Lewand told reporters after Schwartz was fired.

Lewand and General Manager Martin Mayhew conducted the search, with limited input from players such as quarterback Matthew Stafford.

Others interviewed for the Lions job include Mike Munchak, fired after the season by the Titans, and Gary Kubiak, fired mid-season by the Houston Texans.

Schwartz reportedly will be paid $12 million for the final two years of his contract extension, signed in July 2012.

The NFL's highest-paid head coach is New Orleans' Sean Payton at $8 million per season, according to reports from Forbes, ESPN and other sources.

Schwartz's firing ended a tenure that culminated in a wild-card playoff game after winning 10 games in 2011, the team's first postseason appearance since 1999.

His critics noted that the team had developed a reputation for poor sportsmanship, bad penalties and a general failure to live up to expectations despite the talent on the roster.

This season, Detroit lost six of its last seven games, including a four-game streak that culminated with a 14-13 loss to the Minnesota Vikings in the season finale at Minneapolis. In each of those six defeats, Detroit squandered fourth-quarter leads.

Along with the collapse, the Lions blew their lead in the North Division of the National Football Conference.

Schwartz had a career 29-51 record (.363) as coach of the Lions since he was hired away from the Tennessee Titans in January 2009.

He inherited a team that the season prior had become the first NFL team to go 0-16.

Three seasons later, in 2011, the Lions finished 10-6, their first winning record since 2000 and first playoff berth since 1999. Detroit lost 45-28 to the New Orleans Saints in the wild-card round at the Superdome.

The Lions haven't won a playoff game since beating the Dallas Cowboys 38-6 on Jan. 5, 1992, at the Pontiac Silverdome.

The last full-time Lions head coach to have a winning record is Joe Schmidt, who went 43-35-7 (.547) over 85 games from 1967 to '72.

The most successful full-time Detroit coach is Buddy Parker, who was 50-24-2 (.671) over six seasons spanning 1951-56.

The longest-tenured Lions coach was Wayne Fontes, who lasted more than eight seasons — he took over for the fired Darryl Rodgers during the 1988 season. Fontes assembled a 67-71 (.486) record until being fired after the 1996 season. He coached a franchise-record 138 games, and his wins and losses are also Lions records.